Warning: This story contains spoilers for season 3 of Stranger Things.
There's no denying it: Robin (Maya Hawke) is the breakout star of Stranger Things.
In case you didn't spend your long weekend devouring the third season that just hit Netflix on July 4, here's what you need to know about the new character: Robin is Steve Harrington's (Joe Keery) coworker at Scoops Ahoy, an ice-cream shop at the newly-opened Starcourt Mall in Hawkins. We don't get to learn too much about the character beyond her relationship to Steve and Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo), but that doesn't mean we didn't fully fall in love with her sarcastic remarks, code-cracking Russian translations, and perfect shoulder-grazing bob over the course of all eight episodes.
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Robin's haircut isn't pivotal to the plot, but it does offer some insight into the character. Hair department head Sarah Hindsgaul, who has worked on Stranger Things since its first season, tells Refinery29 that when initially designing Robin's look, the main goal was clear: to make her as different from Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) as possible.
The eldest Wheeler sibling may be a former goody-two-shoes-turned-fearless aspiring investigative journalist, but she still visibly cares about keeping up with trends in a way Robin does not. After all, Nancy has a perm and wears bolder makeup in the third season, true to '80s style cues; Robin keeps her skin practically bare and her hair visibly undone — which was the point. "I don't think [Robin] has ever gone to the hair salon," Hindsgaul explains. "We didn't want anything in-your-face with her. She should just be a little bit messy, fun, lively, and quirky."
To achieve Robin's look, Hindsgaul wanted to add softer texture to Hawke's shoulder-length cut, and added highlights to the actress' natural color. "I made her really blonde," she explains. "She was much darker, but I wanted to make her pop a little more next to Steve. So, we gave her a double set of highlights and a layered bob."
Robin may not care much about her looks, but it's no denying that she made an impression on us anyway. Who would've guessed we'd be asking our hairstylists for a cut straight out of 1985?